Notre Dame 67 - Syracuse 58: The Day The T-Shirts Died

No ESPN or Twitter for me until Monday. I can’t bear the gloating.

For Triche to take over.

He has been a ghost the past few weeks. Waiters didn’t have a hot hand, and it just seemed like Brandon didn’t want to take a shot

BAYE- ATROCIOUS. At least Scoop’s problem seems to be up and down, whereas Baye is unfortunately terminally club-handed.

…we had a go-to guy.

“Sara-ee-cuse ain’t not that der good, dropping dem to numba 23 this week.”

Any good team, at some point, will have a bad (or atrocious) 40 minutes. Nearly every commentator who we actually like Syracuse pointed that out before our loss. Notre Dame is great at home. We were without our starting center, who’s like 6th in the country in shot blocking %. We didn’t have time to prepare mentally — or in practice — for Melo not to be there (his twitter yesterday said he was getting ready to hit the road with the team). And then there’s the insane shooting percentage from three and the godawful officiating (100 second possession?!? Really?!?). We lost by single digits.

Look, I’m not letting our team off the hook. We didn’t look good, but no heart? North Carolina — that’s a team without heart. I really didn’t like how we looked like last year’s team tonight, but I’m over it. The loss isn’t important; everyone loses sometime, and I’d rather our wake up was in January and not March or April. The real important thing is what this team does next. Let’s make Cinci sorry they ever THOUGHT about playing us after Notre Dame.

Bring back the Big Bastard!

I hate that its to Notre Damn. I wish it was Cincinnati actually because they are better and not as stupid. But as much as I wanted the undefeated regular season I want the national title more. And I think that this team could not handle being undefeated going into the tourney. I just think pressure could get to the easy cough :: Scoop :: cough. So hey it had to happen, sucks it happen, but all I know is I wouldnt want to be a Cincinnati player or fan come Monday.

I decided to create a new meme to entertain myself for the night

[IMG]http://i42.tinypic.com/wbq55f.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]http://i41.tinypic.com/rcvcis.jpg[/IMG]

1. Probably the most important: we weren’t running our sets offensively. Too often players seemed rushed and either settled for jump shots or took a difficult shot when they should have kicked it back out or looked for the extra pass.

2. Higgins. Anyone who sees someone standing in the paint with the ball wailing his elbows at players for an eternity should call something.

3. ND got some VERY lucky bounces on A LOT of shots. This game reminded me of the Butler game a few years ago where Butler was making all kinds of crazy shots that would almost never go in.

That’ll help with the whole H&H thing.

College kids are prone to have off nights.

Maybe KJo and co won’t be on Twitter at 230am before the Cincy game.

“I called in before and y’all laughed at me, but this game proves it, Kris Joseph is a terrible player. This team is terrible because they can’t rebound.”

I had to laugh at the troll attempt, then the guy started getting personally offended that the hosts were still laughing at him and I realized he was serious. At this point I felt bad for him. He’s that guy who sits behind you at games and can only say negative things about our team and complain about the officiating. Every bad break is because “he’s an idiot,” “he’s no good,” or “that was a foul!” Even when we’re winning these people only have negative, pessimistic feelings about their team, I don’t even know why they’re fans.

Fortunately, I think these fools only have the mental capacity to access Syracuse.com, so we’re lucky not to have to deal with them here. Still, I know all of you have sat next to this guy once or twice in the dome.

The one thing I’m still trying to figure out how in the fuck scoop was called for that offensive foul. I see some bs calls in games. And while they normally upset me or flat out piss me off, by the end of the game I’m good. I realize it was a shit call/no call and theres nothing we can do about it. But I’m not going to let that one go. That was bull shit. Plain and simple.

Its been so long I had pretty much forgotten what it felt like.

Oddly, OK with the loss. They played like they wanted to lose, and they did. There is worse things than losing on the road @ ND with the sudden removal of your starting center I suppose.

Oh well, here is to Cincy Monday night, I hope the boys break out of the funk they were in last night!

How many Melos fall victim to the street, rest in peace young Mookie theres a heaven for a G

had a sign that said:

TOMORROW ON ESPN
:01 ND Over Cuse
:59 TEBOW!

I had to laugh at that. Those guys are like a bunch of high school girls about Tebow. (Whats Tebow doing now? Whats Tebow wearing? Isnt Tebow the coolest? Do you think Tebow likes me?)

1) W/O starting Center.
2) LIghts out from 3 will beat the zone. I’ll roll the dice on that evert time when the result is 20-1
3) Worst shooting game in years, w/o starting center, on road against good team, and we were still down only 2 poss with ball with a couple minutes to go.
4) Our defense is still sick nasty good.

I’ll hit the panic button if Fab is out indefinitely.

how much impact do you think losing Mookie had? He was a real uplifting dude on the bench and whatnot from what I could see all year.

Even though I could not home a win from us (from one of our other homes), I just want you to know that I gave it my all. I shouted, I heckled, I pissed off ND fans behind me and in the student section. I reminded them of their terrible record and told them they were still going to the NIT. And I stayed until the clock hit zero (and then booked it in the other direction). I wish the team could have performed better, but I’m pleased with my record.

And honestly, I’m surprised (though I shouldn’t be) at all the drama in this thread. Yeah, it sucked. But people really not see this one coming? I didn’t expect us to be basically out of contention after the first 5 minutes, but I knew when I bought the ticket 10 days ago that this could be the game and when I heard that Fab was out, I figured it would be a long day.

Everyone loses a game. It doesn’t mean we are a bad team or that what we did in the first 20 games doesn’t mean anything. Everything went wrong today. Some days are just not your day and yesterday wasn’t ours. The good thing is that the team WAS fighting. And I do think Fab would have made a difference in this game. What we needed was a few momentum changing plays that stuck and a big block or dunk from Fab could have done that.

So we lost to a team with a ridiculous home court advantage, at their place, when they couldn’t miss and we couldn’t hit, when the calls went in our favor, and when our starting center was out. It happens. In some ways, I’m glad it’s over and we can get on with the basketball without having to worry about being undefeated. (Not that I didn’t enjoy being undefeated, of course.) So let’s get to work.

It was a good run. It was bound to happen eventually. At least it was in the middle in the conference season and not in round 2 of the NCAA. There’s a lot of talk about missing Fab, no rebounding, etc, but it really just comes down to this; ND shot 50% (50% from 3) and Syracuse shot 34% (30% from 3). There was bound to be a game like this. And, looking at the other numbers, the only thing that was really off from normal was the blocks (2). Yeah, the Orange were -13 on the boards. But they were -14 against Pitt. They were only -2 on the offensive glass. Still 9 steals. Still forced 17 TOs. Aside from the first 10 minutes or so, Syracuse didn’t play poorly. They just allowed themselves to get too far down to make it all the way back. Thankfully, they’re going to win most nights they play 30 minutes of good basketball. This just wasn’t one of them.